Saturday, January 19, 2013

Puerto Rico Day 5: 1/8/13

We’ve been seeing a bunch of island animals. Stray chickens, dogs, cats, and pigs. An occasional deer. Pelicans, a funny-looking bird that looked like a Northern Jacuna, and a heron.

Today we went on a hike to Playa Resaca, literally undertow beach. We drove up a steep road. The trail at the beginning did not look inviting at all, as it was totally overgrown with grass.

Dave pushed through and we eventually found a decent trail heading down. It was for the most part manageable, with a few tricky parts where we had to navigate carefully past some mean thorn bushes. When we got to the bottom we walked through a mangrove forest and emerged out onto the beach.

Two girls following us emerged a little later. It was similar to Flamenco Beach with the soft sand and clear green waters that merged into deeper blues. But it felt wilder and more dangerous. The waves were taller and stronger. The wind was so strong that the flying sand formed a few inches of haze above the actual beach. No one wanted to venture into the water. The waves dashed onto the cliffs on either side of the beach. Even from a distance you could sense the power of the waves and the destruction it could easily cause. The winds brought all sorts of detritus onto the beach – plastic parts, bits of rope, part of a crate. Several palm trees were buried up to their leaves.

At the rocky end of the beach we found several sea snails.

We found a palm tree laden with coconuts.

We found a sharp rock and David managed to cut past the fibrous exterior and expose the coconut.

He cracked it open and we drank the water and ate some of the meat.

On the hike back we found an old well and unexpectedly, a funny little hermit crab. We were famished after the hike. We went to Juanita Bananas, a mobile eatery in town that did sushi. We had shark tempura with aioli, a tuna roll, and a “crunchy” roll. It was all very good, especially the shark. In retrospect Mabel thinks that she’s never had shark before.

We met a friendly local, Stephanie, who sold us a bottle of bug bite tonic called Neem and let us in on some of the Culebran-goings ons. We met Redd, a sweet-faced docile dog who had been abandoned by his original owners and adopted by a friend of Stephanie’s.

After an afternoon nap, Dave ventured into the Flamenco Beach waters despite the strong winds. Feeling lazy, we stayed in and made quesadillas for dinner. Dave made a shaken pina colada with gin and said he couldn’t tell the difference between that and one made with rum.